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Terror mismanagement: evidence that mortality salience exacerbates attentional bias in social anxiety
Death anxiety is a basic fear underlying a range of psychological conditions, and has been found to increase avoidance in social anxiety. Given that attentional bias is a core feature of social anxiety, the aim of the present study was to examine the impact of mortality salience (MS) on attentional...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Routledge
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4989869/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26211552 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2015.1065794 |
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author | Finch, Emma C. Iverach, Lisa Menzies, Ross G. Jones, Mark |
author_facet | Finch, Emma C. Iverach, Lisa Menzies, Ross G. Jones, Mark |
author_sort | Finch, Emma C. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Death anxiety is a basic fear underlying a range of psychological conditions, and has been found to increase avoidance in social anxiety. Given that attentional bias is a core feature of social anxiety, the aim of the present study was to examine the impact of mortality salience (MS) on attentional bias in social anxiety. Participants were 36 socially anxious and 37 non-socially anxious individuals, randomly allocated to a MS or control condition. An eye-tracking procedure assessed initial bias towards, and late-stage avoidance of, socially threatening facial expressions. As predicted, socially anxious participants in the MS condition demonstrated significantly more initial bias to social threat than non-socially anxious participants in the MS condition and socially anxious participants in the control condition. However, this effect was not found for late-stage avoidance of social threat. These findings suggest that reminders of death may heighten initial vigilance towards social threat. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4989869 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Routledge |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-49898692016-09-06 Terror mismanagement: evidence that mortality salience exacerbates attentional bias in social anxiety Finch, Emma C. Iverach, Lisa Menzies, Ross G. Jones, Mark Cogn Emot Brief Article Death anxiety is a basic fear underlying a range of psychological conditions, and has been found to increase avoidance in social anxiety. Given that attentional bias is a core feature of social anxiety, the aim of the present study was to examine the impact of mortality salience (MS) on attentional bias in social anxiety. Participants were 36 socially anxious and 37 non-socially anxious individuals, randomly allocated to a MS or control condition. An eye-tracking procedure assessed initial bias towards, and late-stage avoidance of, socially threatening facial expressions. As predicted, socially anxious participants in the MS condition demonstrated significantly more initial bias to social threat than non-socially anxious participants in the MS condition and socially anxious participants in the control condition. However, this effect was not found for late-stage avoidance of social threat. These findings suggest that reminders of death may heighten initial vigilance towards social threat. Routledge 2016-10-02 2015-07-24 /pmc/articles/PMC4989869/ /pubmed/26211552 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2015.1065794 Text en © 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
spellingShingle | Brief Article Finch, Emma C. Iverach, Lisa Menzies, Ross G. Jones, Mark Terror mismanagement: evidence that mortality salience exacerbates attentional bias in social anxiety |
title | Terror mismanagement: evidence that mortality salience exacerbates attentional bias in social anxiety |
title_full | Terror mismanagement: evidence that mortality salience exacerbates attentional bias in social anxiety |
title_fullStr | Terror mismanagement: evidence that mortality salience exacerbates attentional bias in social anxiety |
title_full_unstemmed | Terror mismanagement: evidence that mortality salience exacerbates attentional bias in social anxiety |
title_short | Terror mismanagement: evidence that mortality salience exacerbates attentional bias in social anxiety |
title_sort | terror mismanagement: evidence that mortality salience exacerbates attentional bias in social anxiety |
topic | Brief Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4989869/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26211552 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2015.1065794 |
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